I started to work up in my old bedroom, playing, writing songs, and it somehow came to me that I could introduce soul music. Nobody seemed to be doing that.

In the early days, I had very little idea about arrangements, and I wrote songs a little flat, as it were, just on an acoustic guitar. They didn't really have quite enough nuance.

I do not wanna write a song like 'Coathanger' so Andrew Breitbart can rage against me on his web site. It's not my idea of fun.

I went to Morocco, joined a band called Pegasus, ran out of money, went to Gibraltar and worked on the docks, writing songs about the sun and the morning and the birds.

I never learned music. I'm quite uneducated, and usually I sat in front of the TV, with soap operas on, in England. It was very inspiring for me, I'd done all this traveling around, I came back living with my parents, everyone around me was like they're living in a soap opera.

When the mighty chains of darkness had me on the ropes, everyone said quit now, that's when I found hope.

Some people are in charge of pens who shouldn't be in charge of brooms.